More on Kenya

I have been reading more about the situation in Kenya than I should, and this post is going to summarize just a few of the things I've read. There's much more out there, but it occurred to me that these links might give some insight to someone who isn't familiar with Kenya or the situation.

As I've said in other posts, I haven't been back to Kenya in years. Until all this happened, I wasn't even following the elections there. I knew they were going to happen on the 27th and I even prayed for them, since in Kenya, as in many, many countries around the world, election time is often volatile. But I've had to read a lot to get up to speed on some of the issues in the election. And even at that, I know there's a whole lot I'm not completely understanding. (Part of the problem is that my Swahili was never much good, and now is practically nonexistent. Lots of the Kenyan news videos are in English, but with all the interviews in Swahili.)

One thing that is striking me most in what I'm reading is that people are deeply, deeply divided about what is the best thing to be done next. Often a well-reasoned, thoughtful blog post will be followed by dozens of comments from people sniping at each other, sometimes calling each other names and making tribal slurs. (If the subject matter weren't so serious, I would really enjoy the language of these comments, since they are sprinkled with "akina" and "kweli" and "kwani" and lots of the other Sheng/Swahili expressions that make Kenyan English so distinctive and expressive and wonderful to listen to.) Of course the anonymity of the internet is partly to blame for this insulting manner, and maybe people wouldn't do this if they were in the same room.

I am well aware of tribal prejudices in Kenya, though I've never witnessed them turning into violence as they have in the last week. It mostly takes the form of stereotypes about other groups, often jokingly cited by the people themselves, in much the same way a person of Scottish descent might call herself cheap. (If you know about Kenya, you know which ethnic group is supposed to have that characteristic there, but I'm not saying.) Any time people from 42 tribes, many of which are culturally quite different from one another, live together in a country the size of Texas, you're going to have some friction occasionally.

In spite of the tribal feelings, magnified a hundredfold by what has been happening this week, Kenyans aren't some crazed people out for blood. What's going on is more complicated than that. At Kumekucha, you can read an explanation that makes a lot of sense, in my opinion: "what we have in Kenya is a popular uprising against a rigged election where some people have taken advantage to settle scores related to ethnicity." Here's the rest of the post. In some areas, this has been encouraged by certain politicians. People have even been promised free land if they can kick out the "interlopers" who have been peacefully living there. You can imagine the effect of promises like this on people who are living in poverty. Read this, for example.

The blog Changing Journalism explains how the international coverage has been simplifying the situation, to the point of even interpreting Swahili incorrectly. You can read that here. There's more about the media getting it wrong at Eyes on Kenya.

Elsewhere, there are arguments about what does or doesn't constitute genocide, for example in the comments to this chilling article. This is the sort of discussion I never thought would happen about Kenya. How much mass murder does there have to be before it can be called genocide? If, as I've seen elsewhere (and I can't locate where at this moment), people are being loaded into trucks and given pangas (machetes) to use, that seems to fit the "planned" part of the equation. It's all just too horrifying to believe.

Mad Kenyan Woman has posted a couple of impassioned, eloquent calls for people to calm down and think of the future and of their children. One of them has been republished at Kenya Imagine (which has the best title of all).

Many bloggers have been posting incredible coverage with photos. See, for example, Thinker's Room and Nick Wadham's blog.

I've also been very interested by the personal experiences and reactions posted by Mzungu Chick, among others. (Mzungu is the Swahili word for a white person.) And please, read What an African Woman Thinks.

Of course, the violence is going to have many long-term effects, including the balkanization of Nairobi slums, covered in this article. You may have seen this email from chaplain at Baraton University in Eldoret, as it's been widely republished, including at the BBC's site. It's terrible reading, from the same general area where the church was burned. And I can't find out what happened next. This account also really underlines the fact that these are large gangs of young guys who have been mobilized. This isn't just hordes of people spontaneously attacking their neighbors. Here's more about people fleeing Eldoret. Many families who have lived there for generations are saying they can't ever live there again - they wouldn't trust the people around them.

I don't expect most of the people who read this are nearly as obsessed with the whole situation as I am, but I hope you will read at least some of these articles and see that the situation is complicated and sad and terrible. I hope and pray that something will be done quickly that will bring the violence to an end, but there will be repercussions of this felt for many years to come, whatever happens next.